Friday, December 9, 2016

Ten Gifts Your Author Friend will Actually Appreciate

So last year I wrote a post about Post
Holiday Gifts for Authors. Partially because after the holidays, people
have gift cards to run through and partially because… I forgot to do anything
with it before that.

Not this year. I’m here with another collection of things
you can get for the authors, aspiring authors, and other book-creating people
(Editors, formatters, etc.) who might be in your life.

Or, you know, you could get them for your favorite author,
too. *cough cough*

(I feel compelled to note this: I link to products on Amazon
through this article, and they go through my Affiliate Account. No extra charge
for you, but I do make a small percentage of what you spend if you buy them
through these links.)

10: Pens

If there’s one thig
that authorial types are always lacking, but never getting, it’s pens. It’s an
interesting and stubborn approach most authors and editors seem to take to
pens. We never have them, because they go missing. We let someone borrow them
at some event, we hand one to our friend at a writer’s group because, being an
author, they don’t have one either, we use them to stir our coffee (I’m very
guilty of this.). Whatever reason, we don’t have them, but we know we just bought two dozen. So we refuse to
buy more on principle… even though we’re the only ones paying for it.

These lovely Z-Grip retractable pens would be a good
choice. Plus they come in lots of colors, which is always a must for me.

9: Whiteboard

Whiteboards are
surprisingly useful little things for anyone who works from home, really.
They’re a quick way to have a to-do list every day without running through
reams of paper every year. They can be a place for a calendar. Writers can use
them for quick plot sketches or brainstorming. Editors can mark down things to
come back to without filling up the manuscript with comments that have to be deleted.
It’s awesome, and I actually love giving them as gifts to my authorial friends.
It’s not something most people get for themselves, but they use the hell out of
it once they have it.

This is the one I have. It hangs up in my
bedroom so I can add my to-do list first thing when I get up. And, in line with
my love of colored pens… a colored marker set.
Dry erase markers are also very
appreciated if you have a teacher in your life. Trust me on this one. A pack of
dry erase markers for a teacher will be received very well.

8: A Mug

Writers, even if
they don’t drink coffee, pretty much all have a hot beverage of choice, and we
pretty much all have a slightly
unhealthy devotion to whatever that beverage is. Me personally, I collect mugs.
I have a bit of a problem, actually. I have to be very careful in thrift stores
because I’ll just buy all the mugs. But I have one in particular that I, as a
writer, adore.

This little number sits on my desk when it’s
really time to buckle down. It’s seen the start of books and intense edits and
tight deadlines, and it just sits there and holds my java, ready for whatever
is to come with its inspiring message.

7: Flash Drive

This is another one
that most authors have—or had—and like. But it’s like pens—they go missing, or
we just break them and never buy a new one for whatever reason. Then we kick
ourselves—and throw things—when our files corrupt and we don’t have a backup…

… like I don’t
because I haven’t used my flash drive in months. Whoops.

This is a nice affordable one with lots of
storage. One this size can last an author a long time, since Word documents
are so very tiny, so for ten bucks you can get them something they can use for
years and year… as long as they don’t lose it in the first week.

6: Timer

One of the hazards
anyone working from home faces is time management. Some authors I know (Or have
heard of.) are incredibly good at it. Nora Roberts, for example, works four
hours, takes an hour lunch, and works for more hours. That’s sort of the ideal
for most authors, or something close to it. 6+ hours every day, barring things
like holidays and emergencies. However, we tend to be… well, we suck at it, by
and large. Sometimes a day of work is 15 hours not moving from the chair
because the writing just sounds really good. Other days—and far more often than
the former—it’s half an hour staring at blank page before giving up and
watching cake decorating tutorials on Youtube.

Not that I would ever… I mean, I wouldn’t… Okay
once. Or twice. Or more.

It’s why timers
come in handy. Now, Google has a timer that pops up if you just search “Timer.”
Most phones and tablets have a timer/stopwatch app, or you can download one.
Even my flip phone has one, I think. But there’s something to be said for
having an external one. You’re not having to involve the internet for anything,
which cuts back the risk of falling into Facebook… or those damned cake
tutorials.

It doesn’t need to
be fancy. This is a basic model that can
either count down (For working specific times.) or count up (Just to keep
track.). And that’s all it really needs to be.

5: An Excuse to
Read

Authors pretty
universally love reading, but we just don’t make the time for it. This is your
chance to help us remember the joy of reading. Buy your author or editor or
whoever a new book from an author they love. That might just be the spark that
convinces them to crack open a book and actually read.

I can’t really
recommend a book to you, since I don’t know your friend, but scan their
bookshelves, get them talking about books, and see who comes up. Or find out
which books they’ve lost over the years. But get them a nice, relatively
risk-free book and they might very well take the time to tear the words off the
page.

4: A Plant

Your lovely author
friend or family member likely spends a lot of time sitting in the same place
looking at the same things and breathing the same air that’s been in there with
them for the past several months. You’re not going to convince them to stop all
that sitting very easily, but you can maybe help clean the air up and get
something exciting to look at.

Buy them a plant. I
would personally recommend going to your local nursery and getting something
that can thrive inside in your area… possibly with minimal care, depending on
the temperament of your friend. But if you want to order online, you can get
this Peace Lily for under $20.

3: Address Labels

This is especially
prevalent if your author runs a lot of giveaways or has one of those publishers
that still insists on snail mail (I have one of them. It’s slightly annoying to
deal with.). They’re constantly writing addresses on things.

While you can’t fix
the whole problem—the address things are being sent to—you can make the return
address easy with address labels. Now, you’ll need to know the address they do
all their businessy things through, which might not be their home address. This
is when asking someone in the know might be good. But you can even get
customized labels on Amazon, which was kind of a shock for me. These ones are super-affordable, and should
last quite a while.

2: Healthy Snacks

If you love your
author enough to buy them a gift in the first place, you probably hope they’re
healthy and all that stuff. Unfortunately, a lot of us just aren’t healthy at
all. Or not as healthy as we should be. When you’re working a tight deadline,
is it easier to make a proper lunch, or throw down half a bag of Cheetos and
call it good? It’s the latter, if you couldn’t guess. Snacking works the same
way. We grab what’s easy, and that tends to be something shelf stable and about
as natural as a drag queen’s breast plate.

Enter this thing
that I’ve recently discovered: snack care packages. You can order them on
Amazon, and can even get them delivered on a recurring schedule if you want to
really shell out the money. They’ve got things like granola bars, dried fruit,
and low fat chips, all individually packaged. Most of them are enough to last
for an average month.

Now, it’s the most
expensive thing on this list, but it’s still not bank-breaking. But maybe save
this for an author close to you instead of just an acquaintance. I’m dropping
my recommendation for this one in particular,
but there are a lot of different options out there. And keep the link so you
can send it to them if they want to keep getting it delivered. Or just stick it
inside the card with your gift. Easy-peasy.

1: Planner

As authors, we can
handle the “putting words together” part. You don’t get into this if you don’t
have some kind of grasp on that. What we—and I imagine a lot of other artistic
types—struggle with the most is organization and planning. Time management.
Motivation. All those pesky things that get in the way of “putting words
together.”

There’s a reason
this is the number one thing on the list, and a reason that so many of these
entries seem to touch on organization and things like that instead of passion.
I’ve never met a truly passionless writer. We all love writing. It’s the other
crap that kills us.

A yearly planner
can really help with that. And there’s even one specifically for authors
floating around out there: The 2017 AuthorLife
Planner. It’s brilliant and it really lays things out step by step. And it
does arrive before Christmas, if you get it today. (That would be 12/9).

So hopefully this
is something that can help you out. A little look into the gifts an author will
appreciate. And before Christmas this time, which is a pleasant change for me.

I really hope, if
nothing else, this was an enjoyable read. Maybe useful. And more than that, I
hope you have an awesome rest of your day,